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Sauce

Champagne Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, stock, champagne or wine, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Champagne Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and cook until it turns a dark brown.

  3. Gradually stir in the stock until smooth.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the champagne or wine.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + champagnetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Champagne + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries flavor and richness, and its fat lets the flour cook into a smooth roux.
Flour
Forms the roux with butter, thickening the sauce as starch absorbs the liquid.
Rich stock
Provides the savory liquid base that becomes the body of the sauce.
Champagne or white wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, savory sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour to dark brown. Starch thickens best while the roux is still pale. Browning adds nutty flavor but weakens thickening power and can scorch quickly, so watch the roux closely and keep stirring.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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